Skip to main content
Dessert

Ratafias

A sweet almond cookie made with ground sweet and bitter almonds, sugar, rice flour, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ratafias

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour, sweet almonds, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add the egg whites and beat until a paste forms.

Pipe and bake

  1. Fill a piping bag with the mixture and pipe onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

  2. Dust with fine sugar and bake in a cool oven (300°F / 150°C).

  3. Remove from paper after baking.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whip into the paste that gives the cookies their structure and light texture.
Caster sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies set and brown during baking.
Ground sweet almonds
Provide the main body, nutty flavour and moisture of the cookie.
Fine rice flour
Adds a small amount of starch that helps the cookies hold their shape.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites into a paste. The paste must be thick enough to pipe and hold its shape. Under-beaten mixture spreads and loses definition in the oven, while over-mixing can deflate the structure.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, rice, flour, egg):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Milletfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Cashew nutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rice, flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More almond cookies recipes

Chocolate 4 See all 29 →

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipes